Early Indo-European Texts

Armenian

Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum

This page contains a text in Armenian with a modern English translation.
This particular text and its translation are extracted from a lesson in the
Early Indo-European Online
series, where one may find detailed information about this text
(see the Table of Contents page for Classical Armenian Online in
EIEOL),
and general information about the Armenian language and its speakers' culture.

Translation

But accordingly they also ask this: "If nothing evil existed before, whence
did the serpent, which you call Satan, learn the characteristics of Evil?"
We say that Satan understood as evil man's disobedience to God, on account
of which he induced man to this. It is like when one would be another's
enemy, and having concealed his enmity, he would secretly wish to harm him;
yet he would not know the nature of the harm, and having come he would
wander around in search of means; then, having found the time when someone
among the physicians would give an order to his adversary not to touch this
thing, and not to taste such a type of food, by which he could arrive to
health; and having heard of it, soon pretending under the guise of
friendship, he would blame the healer; and, labelling the useful things as
harmful to him, he would persuade him, and he would give directions
contrary to the orders of the physician, and by this do him harm; and, if
he did not recognize beforehand the nature of the harm, rather having found
the cure in the physician's order, it was harmful. Thus it is thought also
of Satan, his envying of the first-created man, and his not knowing the
nature of the evil-doing; because, though there was no evil before, from
which it was possible to recognize its nature, nevertheless having learned
from God's commandment -- which was given to man to keep him from partaking
of some deadly part of the plant -- he offered to man that which, though it
was not a useless bit of food for man, and not by nature a deadly plant,
nevertheless on this very count man was prohibited from partaking of this
-- rather disobedience was the basis of death for man, as for a criminal
who would disobey the dictum of an authority that would restrain him.